


Blue Jay

by MickyRC



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Christmas Decorations, Christmas Music, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Domestic, Everything Hurts, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt No Comfort, I am staunchly pro-Coulson lives, I'm Sorry, I'm so sorry Clint you deserve better, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Mind Control, It's just all sad, Kinda, M/M, Memories, Post-Avengers (2012), also somehow along the way it got Christmasy, but not in this fic, soooo not a fix-it, the Christmas stuff is also very sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 07:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21370306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MickyRC/pseuds/MickyRC
Summary: He’d been told there wouldn’t be anything left to salvage.  Not that it really mattered; everything important lived in a go-bag, anyway, had come with them to New Mexico or stayed in a locker on the Helicarrier.  But he walked through the wreckage anyway, weaving through mangled support beams and ignoring the Danger: Keep Out signs, heading for the back of the building.In which Clint goes back to the apartment he and Coulson used to call home, and finds it as destroyed as he feels.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Phil Coulson & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Phil Coulson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	Blue Jay

**Author's Note:**

> I sat down to write Clint/Coulson fluff. _I sat down to write Clint/Coulson fluff._ And what did I get? THIS. This is not fluff. This is about as fluffy as a flattened air mattress.
> 
> I dunno, man.
> 
> Lyrics and music to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane.

There used to be an apartment building out towards the edge of Manhattan. There are a lot of apartment buildings towards the edge of Manhattan, but only a few were fully destroyed in the Battle of New York. Clint stood in front of one, wondering how they’d managed to hit this particular building when everything around it was practically untouched. One stray Chitauri ship, one stray spot of destruction. As always, right where it could hurt the most.

He’d been told there wouldn’t be anything left to salvage. Not that it really mattered; everything important lived in a go-bag, anyway, had come with them to New Mexico or stayed in a locker on the Helicarrier. But he walked through the wreckage anyway, weaving through mangled support beams and ignoring the Danger: Keep Out signs, heading for the back of the building.

_“Big windows, roof access. Faces on an empty alley, can’t do much better than that for security.”_

The window box he used to grow kitchen herbs in was crushed on the pavement of the alleyway, spilling dirt and bits of root over the concrete. Whether something had landed on it or if it was just from the drop, he couldn’t say. A four story fall could do a number on a person; who was to say what it would do to cheap plastic?

A patch of pale blue caught his eye, and he found a strip of semi-sheer cotton fabric, hemmed with white thread.

_“Where are your curtains?”_

_“Curtains?”_

_“Oh, мой дурак. I’ll take care of it.”_

He tucked the fabric in his pocket. Nat would want to see how well it had held up.

Past a pile of dusty pink rubble that had belonged to their neighbor across the hall, there was a stack of splintering wood, all stacked together and crushed under a chunk of ceiling plaster. Clint made his way towards what had been their front closet.

There was a coat under the first big heave of debris, one he didn’t even remember owning. It had probably been meant for the donation box and never quite made it. Now there was a rend all along the side seam, and plaster dust burrowed so deep into the wool that wearing it would be like walking around with chalkboard erasers tied to your shoes. Clint took it anyway. Maybe the fabric could be used for something.

Next he uncovered the remains of a single boot, the rubber of the sole shredded and then melted back together, like a chocolate bar left in your pocket too long. He left that. It felt too much like him.

There was an intact cardboard box under a shelf plank. A little crushed on the corner, a little damp on the side, but it had somehow, by some chance of construction and placement, survived the building collapsing around it. He touched it hesitatingly, sure it would fall apart at the slightest shift, but it just stayed sitting there, content to exist as it always had. Delicately, carefully, as gently as his rough fingers could manage, he teased the weak tape from the edge. The adhesive was so muted with humidity it didn’t even tear the card. Clint looked down at the gap between the top flaps, at the black void hiding something insignificant enough to be left unlabeled in a closet, but important enough to survive the world collapsing around it.

It was probably broken. Just because the box had survived, didn’t mean the contents had. Or it was just something else that had never gotten to the donation bin; old jeans, or a stack of those paperbacks nobody ever buys but end up on the shelf, anyway.

But maybe. Maybe it was something he should have. He couldn’t just leave it there, if it was.

He pulled the flaps back.

_“Clint. It’s November fourth.”_

_“And?”_

_“It’s… really? It’s two months to Christmas.”_

_“I like the lights. It’s after Halloween, I can put ‘em up.”_

_“…okay. But if I hear one single Christmas song before Thanksgiving, I _will_ add questions to your mission reports.”_

_“See, that would be a great threat if I ever actually did my paperwork. You’re losing your touch, sir.”_

_“You wish, Barton.”_

The icicle lights they hung over the window were tangled and dusty, the way Christmas lights in boxes always are. But they were whole. He checked each length of wire meticulously, letting the cord pass through his fingers with a shape that was familiar and a flexibility that was not. He examined each little, pointed bulb, looking for cracks or wonky filaments, anything that might be dangerous to plug in. Anything that might tell him to leave them here. The last plug passed through his hands, prongs straight and perfectly normal. Perfectly safe.

Clint caught his breath on a heave. Of all the things. Of all the boxes and shelves and closets. The Christmas decorations had survived.

He dug back into the box. A little stuffed snowman in a felt hat. A quilted tree-skirt they’d never had a full-sized tree for, but never considered getting rid of. A pile of wintry knick-knacks they’d picked up over the years, bought in little shops and bustling Holiday markets all over the world. He reached in for a little wooden carving of a man on a horse, and his fingers bit into hard styrofoam.

_“Where’d this come from?”_

_“Where’d what come from? Oh. That was my Gran’s.”_

_“Isn’t… didn’t I meet your Gran? I thought she was still—.”_

_“She is. She gave it to me when I was five or six.”_

_“Kind of a weird thing to give to a kid.”_

_“Yeah. I loved it, though. Used to sit on the floor and listen to it for hours.”_

_“Listen?”_

_“Look at the bottom.”_

Clint flipped it over in his hand, the cool glass curves nestling into his palms. His thumb rubbed over a bead of hot glue, where a little ceramic blue jay had been reattached to the base of the snow globe. On the bottom, kept company by small bits of packing foam, was a little gold-painted knob.

_“That’s pretty.”_

_“Yeah. ‘S Phil’s.”_

_“Can I?”_

_“Long as you don’t drop it. Nat?”_

_“Hm?”_

_“You’re coming to dinner tomorrow, right?”_

_“Has Coulson made his pretzel things?”_

_“Yeah. They’re taking over the fridge.”_

_“Then yes.”_

_“You know you could make them yourself? They’re, like, three steps.”_

_“Wouldn’t be as good.”_

_“Nah. Guess they wouldn’t be.”_

His fingers were shaking around the tiny metal handle. He propped the globe against his knees, terrified he might drop it, that it would shatter apart and spill out and leave a little blue jay all alone in the wreckage of the apartment. His thumb tightened against the gold, pressing its imprint into the side of his index finger.

_“BARTON!”_

_“Sir?”_

_“We talked about this!”_

_“This? What’s this?”_

_“_Why_ am I hearing Frank Sinatra?”_

_“I thought you liked—”_

_“Three days, Clint! Three more days, that’s all I’m asking here!”_

The plastic snow had all collected at the top of the glass sphere. The blue jay on the side looked up at him, head tucked to the side in a curious slant.

_“Is it actually?”_

_“I kid you the fuck not.”_

_“As long as we aren’t stuck in rural Latveria again, I don’t care if it blizzards.”_

_“Tash, come on, have a sense of Holiday wonder.”_

_“You have to admit this is better than that safehouse.”_

_“Only because you finally put up the curtains I made you.”_

_“Well if Clint hadn’t kept buying the wrong screws for the curtain rod—”_

_“Hey! Wait a minute, you’re supposed to be on my side!”_

_“Face it, Clint. I’ve won him over.”_

_“Not on my watch!”_

_“Please don’t start fighting over me again.”_

_“I have to defend your honor!”_

_“It’s true, Coulson, your very dignity’s at stake.”_

_“Oh, well we can’t have that.”_

Tiny gears creaked as winches pulled and shoved in the base of the snow globe. He twisted quickly, not letting the mechanism start to run until he’d finished winding it up. Winding up the springs and the cogs and the little steel bars tuned to deliberate, tinny pitches. Winding it up until it couldn’t go farther. Until it was ready to burst.

_Have yourself a merry little Christmas  
Let your heart be light,_

The chiming of the music box was the same as it had always been. The same as when it was bought, the same as when Phil used to sit on the floor of his Gran’s hallway, the same as the winter it snowed them in on Christmas Eve. It pattered through single note melodies to land on neatly arranged chords, little traces of harmony peeking through and making everything shinier and silvery cool. When he turned the globe back right side up, the plastic snow gathered at the top began to fall down on the pair of cardinals inside.

_“From now on our troubles will be out of sight…”_

_“Not if this snow keeps up.”_

_“Okay you know what Natasha—”_

_“Don’t. We don’t have enough pretzel wreathes to placate her.”_

_“It’s Christmas fucking Eve! I’ll sing if I want to!”_

The little ceramic cardinals were almost covered, the last flurries settling down. The smooth, flat air bubble at the top of the sphere trembled. A teardrop rolled over the glass surface.

_Here we are as in olden days,  
Happy golden days of yore,_

He pulled the snow globe into his chest, curling around it and holding it, like if he cradled it closely enough, it might become part of him. Like if he never let it go, he could protect it.

_Faithful friends who are dear to us, gather near to us once more._

_“Sinatra’s not a problem now, is it?”_

_“Sinatra’s never a problem, Christmas music this early is.”_

_“You’re not turning it off.”_

_“Can’t risk losing my dance partner.”_

_“I’m not going anywhere.”_

_“Still. Better to be safe.”_

Something was digging into his stomach, and he didn’t care, almost welcomed the physical pain over the memories. The blue jay’s beak buried into his shirt, the tilt of its head shy and melancholy. The little bead of decade old hot glue was smooth on the pad of his index finger, running back and forth over the bird’s tail.

_Through the years we… all will… be…_

The momentum in the gears petered out, and the tempo slowed, dangling resolutions a hair’s breadth too far away, and the music stopped. Like everything did, it stopped too soon and too fast for Clint to fix it, to turn the knob again and keep it playing for another verse. Too soon. Too late.

He stayed there, crouched in the wreckage of his life, for a long time.

There used to be a junk cupboard in Clint Barton’s room. There are a lot of junk cupboards and drawers in Clint Baron’s room, but only one has ever been cleared out. On top of it is a little rosemary plant, started from a clipping, its pot cushioned by a piece of old, dusty wool, with a piece of pale blue cotton fabric tied around it. In the cupboard are several neatly coiled strings of icicle lights, ready and waiting for the day after Halloween, when they can be hung up in a window. Tucked into the bottom is a little stuffed snowman in a felt hat, sitting on a quilted tree-skirt, and the shelves are covered in wintry knick-knacks, the kind you find in little shops or bustling Holiday markets all over the world. And on the top shelf, is a cardboard box. It’s a little crushed on the corner, and there’s an old water stain on the side, but it’s not in bad shape, all things considered. For a month or two every year, the cabinet gets emptied, and the lights take their place in the window, and the knick-knacks get lined up on the coffee table in subtly amusing configurations. Not the box, though. The box only comes out once a year, or when Clint feels especially lonely. The blue jay and the cardinals only get unpacked late at night, on Christmas Eve.

The music box only plays when Clint is missing Phil too much to bear.

**Author's Note:**

> It's... yeah.
> 
> The wooden horse knick-knack is a little reference to scifigrl47's ["Ghosts of Christmas Memory."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/608473) The Toasterverse was basically my gateway to active fandom and my intro to Clint/Coulson, plus their work is just goddamn incredible.
> 
> If you wanna say hi, I'm on tumblr [over here.](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/micky-r-c) I promise I will say hi back!


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